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LINCOLN — Nebraska junior discus thrower Morgan Wilken didn't get to meet her new coach when Husker athletes interviewed the finalists.

So when Carrie Lane got the job and briefly met the team last summer before departing to help coach the U.S. at the world championships, Wilken was surprised. Lane was as small as Wilken's former coach, the late Mark Colligan, was big.

"She didn't look like a thrower," Wilken said. "You look around, most throws coaches look like throwers."

But Wilken knew of Lane's strong résumé at Virginia and the 2009 and 2011 world championships.

"I knew she knew her stuff," Wilken said.

And the team heard the coach strike the right note in those first meetings. Lane wasn't going to upset the older throwers' apple carts. She tweaked their forms and gave advice. But the "orbit" they had created, as Lane puts it, was theirs to keep.

"It's hard trying to change things," senior shot putter Luke Pinkelman said. "When it's working, you don't want to change it. She came right out and said: 'I don't want to change you at all.' I really liked that. She hasn't tried to force anything."

Colligan — who coached at NU for more than 20 years before dying suddenly last year at the NCAA championships — will be honored Saturday at the newly named Mark Colligan Invitational. A highlight video of his career will be shown.

Lane, who knew Colligan a little, will watch and then tell her throwers to use memories of him as competitive fuel.

"They have a unique opportunity to use emotion in a good way — and that's what he would want," she said.

Lane was head coach Gary Pepin's pick after a long national search. She has Midwest roots, having come from Iowa. She experienced coaching at the international level. She wrote articles and gave speeches about throwing.

"She came very, very, very recommended," Pepin said.

Collegiately at Marquette, Lane was a distance runner. She interviewed with the CIA — "I liked the 'international' part of it. I didn't like the paper pushing" — and chose to work at an Oklahoma wildlife refuge instead. Surprisingly, she said, there was more paperwork there, too.

Back to coaching. Lane was intrigued by weight throwing, particularly the hammer. She had competed some in it and done well. So she learned the intricacies of each weight competition. She loved it.

"It's the biomechanics of it," Lane said. "What's so fascinating is generating so much power and speed in a short, explosive amount of time. Whether you're turning with a hammer or running with a spear in your hand — it's being able to hit everything at once with all your energy."

Lane's throwing philosophy is a contrast to Colligan's more organic — Wilken lovingly calls them "cuckoo" — methods. Lane is a stickler for analyzing positions during the throw — each piece of the motion.

She sticks to that analytical mode more often during the fall, she said, before "appealing to a kid's raw competitiveness" during the winter and spring meet seasons.

Emotions are likely to be swirling Saturday for NU throwers. "Oh yeah," said Wilken, who thinks about Colligan "every day."

But Lane said it'll be good for throwers to work through it and honor Colligan, who coached five national champions and 72 Big 12 champions.

"It's going to be sad," she said. "But I don't think the kids will be crippled with sadness. They're going to find a way to celebrate what he was able to do for them. It's going to pay homage to him."

Contact the writer:

402-202-9766, sam.mckewon@owh.com

twitter.com/swmckewonOWH

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